I feel my mental accuity decreasing as I grow older. My memory is getting worse, I'm slower at mental arithmetic, understanding new concepts takes an effort it never did previously, I find myself struggling to remember the names of people, songs, films. My brain is undeniably deteriorating.

And I'm only in my Forties.

I bring this up because I was lying in bed this morning listening to Ken Clarke on the radio going on and on interminably. Now much as I respect Ken for being one of the few semi-sane Tories of the old order he kept repeating himself, evidently unaware that he was doing it, then contradicting things he'd said just a couple of minutes ago. I'm not saying he has dementia or anything, I imagine Ken's perfectly mentally healthy for a man of his age. But it was clear he wasn't aware of the entirety of what he was saying.

So I'm wondering why we have this glib assumption that with age comes wisdom?

With age may come inreased knowledge and experience but it's being used with brains that are past their sell by dates.

Not sure.I think my brain stopped developing when about 15,to be honest.I don't know I think sometimes you can make assumptions I regularly forget what I am doing, put the keys in the fridge,or go to the shop forgetting why and that I haven't got any shoes on and carrying a tea towel for some reason.But I have always done such things.My mum in law calls me wise but she is 92 make of that what you will.

And I'd walked through a number of doorways that evening, but I'd also drowned my sorrows to excess after Scotland failed to reach the World Cup play offs, so that might have had something to do with it.

Either way our brains can exhibit quite peculiar behaviour when it comes to remembering why the fuck we're doing stuff for idiosyncratic reasons resulting from our evolutionary history, so forgetting what you've gone to buy when you go shopping is most likely a hangover from letting that gazelle go and following the trail of that antelope instead.